“Rakuten’s global vision is to make e-commerce a living process, where retailers and consumers can communicate and discover,” Luthi says. “Our challenge when redesigning Buy.com was making sure this vision of e-commerce was reflected. But what does ‘living’ e-commerce look like? Even though we had moved away from a deal site in our strategy, we still visually looked like a deal site. We wanted to ensure our site mimicked our strategy.”

Rakuten Buy.com simplified the design of its home page with a focus on merchants, Luthi says. It also enlarged product images as a way to showcase product categories, which improved the visual appeal of the site. With more appealing category pages, Buy.com says consumers are more apt to go deeper into the site and visit product pages, and, ultimately, add items to the shopping cart. “We did this by looking at the site design as a whole and not at the individual pages, to ensure a better experience for the user,” Luthi says

Besides describing how e-retailers can better connect with consumers, Luthi will discuss during his keynote case studies that illustrate successful e-commerce tactics and give an overview of ways that e-retailers can serve customers in ways competitors don’t.

Attendees “will learn the specific types of content, tools and features that have supported Rakuten Buy.com as we take on the evolving e-commerce market and how shoppers have responded to that change,” Luthi says. Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten acquired Buy.com in 2010 and renamed the U.S. web retailer Rakuten Buy.com.

Internet Retailer’s editors asked Luthi to speak because of leadership at Buy.com, and his experience working for electronics e-retailer Newegg.com and technology distributor Ingram Micro.